The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015, are automatically nominated for the 2015 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on October 23, 2015, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

KIRKUS REVIEW

In this opening volume of the Mapmakers trilogy, 13-year-old Sophia Tims travels into mysterious and uncharted lands in search of her kidnapped uncle and must save the world while she’s at it.

In the Great Disruption of 1799, the world came apart. Continents were unfastened from time and flung into different Ages. Europe plunged into a remote century, the Spanish Empire fragmented, and the United States became an uneasy mix of adjoining Ages: the Baldlands in the West, Prehistoric Snows to the north, New Patagonia to the south—and Sophia’s Boston is now in New Occident. Sophia’s parents are missing in a different Age, and politicians are about to close New Occident’s borders, forever trapping them on the outside. When Sophia’s uncle, master cartologer Shadrack Elli, is kidnapped, her search for him sets her on an adventure with the fate of the whole world at stake. Grove’s intelligent and challenging debut is brilliant in concept, breathtaking in scale and stellar in its worldbuilding; this is a world never before seen in fiction. Sophia is a likable heroine, a girl with no sense of time who must use her wits and her uncle’s maps to save the world before time runs out.

INTERVIEW WITH S.E. GROVE

Debut author S.E. Grove is a historian, dedicated traveler, and has spent years studying the world of maps. Readers of The Glass Sentence (first in her Mapmakers trilogy) are about to benefit from the combined wealth of her interests. Grove’s story transports readers to an expansive and deeply absorbing ...

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